Global Teacher Prize – Two days to go

Michael Wamaya: ‘I look up to Obama’

He teaches ballet to more than 430 students a week in Kenya. They don’t have mirrors to see themselves dance, or anything near proper equipment. Yet, Michael Wamaya has inspired so many with his work that he was one of the 10 Global Teacher Prize Finalists last year.

So who inspires him?

That’s an easy question for Wamaya, who had to leave school and worked as a mechanic as a teen before his teaching career began.

“I look up to Obama,” he said at the Tomorrow Summit. “It works so well with my students when I say, ‘Yes, we can.’”

It helps that Obama’s father came from his county, Siaya, in Kenya. To Wayama, Obama always proposed solutions, as he tries to, even in classrooms that might share one book, or not understand the concept of ballet.

“Thanks to my mobile phone, switching it on, I could show them what ballet is,” he said.

Wamaya said he was able to ease his disappointment at not winning last year by being mentioned by name by Kenya’s president, and being able to travel to Ukraine to talk with teachers there.

Liza Donnelly

Award-winning cartoonist and writer for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Medium, and resident cartoonist at CBS News Liza Donnelly is here at GESF sketching away. Here’s her cartoon of Mike Butcher at the Tomorrow Summit.

11:51, 16 March 2018

Next Billion Prize

Today sees the launch of the Next Billion Prize, as some incredible EdTech Start-Ups pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges.

It’s all taking place down in the Tomorrow Zone, with the winner announced later on this weekend.